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Googleplex designer’s sky offices above London would suck people up from their homes

Clive Wilkinson, who design the original Googleplex, came up with a quirky design that puts a satirical spin on the idea of office spaces. His design envisions a layer of single-level workspaces that hover above cities and suck people up from their homes via pneumatic tubes. Entitled ‘The Endless Workspace,’ the project is a tongue-in-cheek proposal meant to “solve” London’s commuting problems.

The architect designed The Endless Workspace for the latest issue of Flaunt Magazine. The magazine asked Wilkinson to create a design which would combine the cultures of California and UK, particularly the differences between how people commute in Silicon Valley and London. The resulting concept covers London streets with a layer of open-plan co-working spaces.

“It utilizes the scenographic beauty of London, where this workspace blankets the whole city, but opens up everywhere there’s an interesting site or a tourist attraction,” explained Wilkinson. Obviously, his design is a tongue-in-cheek proposal, but the architect claims it actually addresses some important issues with commuting in densely-packed cities. It is based on the idea of entrepreneurship and reducing carbon emissions.

“There’s a statistic that has been reliably used for years, that says that at any given time, that 50% of any workspace is just empty desks,” Wilkinson says. The design tackles the issue and reminds of some of the recent trends in the use of office buildings. Companies such as WeWork, for example, provide shared workspaces for entrepreneurs, freelancers and startups by subletting office spaces, along with furniture and Internet access, utilizing existing office spaces to the fullest.